As soon as she saw the police alongside her, she put the item down and slowed down before being pulled over with blue flashing lights, Pc Mann added.

He cautioned Price and told her she would be reported for using a mobile phone while driving and driving without due care and attention.

Describing her driving as 'careless', Pc Mann said: 'I believe she
said that she wasn't using her mobile and that she was using perfume.

'She leaned back into the back of the cab and pulled a large bottle of perfume out of a large zip bag.

'I said that wasn't the item I had seen. She got her phone out of the same bag and showed me that and said, "Was it that?".

'I couldn't recall whether that was the same one I had seen. It had
coloured gemstones on it. That's not what I had seen in her hand.'

Katie's ride: The star is believed to have been at the wheel of her pink horsebox when she was pulled over in February

Pc Mann said he reported her before allowing her on her way, with Mr Reid sat in the front passenger seat.

During cross-examination, Mr Freeman said Pc Mann's assertion that
the horsebox had taken up 50% of lane two was a "gross exaggeration and
you are mistaken in that fact'.

Mr Freeman suggested to the officer that the drifting was typical among drivers and happened 'quite regularly' on the road.

He also cast doubt on Pc Mann's claim that Price had been seen with
a slim black phone, saying the gem-encrusted phone she produced for the
officer was the only one she had.

'I suggest to you that your description was totally inaccurate to
the extent that she didn't put anything down, she just pulled over,' Mr
Freeman told the officer.

Pc Mann replied: 'I saw her hand drop to her right-hand side.'

Police community support officer Edward Mitchell said he immediately
knew who the horsebox belonged to after seeing it on television.

He said: 'I looked at the vehicle and saw Miss Price who I believe was texting on her phone.

'She was looking down at her phone pressing the phone with her right
hand. She was texting or dialling a number. My view was very good.'

He said he told Pc Mann what he had seen and they decided to pull her over.
PCSO Mitchell stayed in the patrol car while Pc Mann went to question Price because 'he had more powers'.

The case was adjourned before lunch after Mr Freeman put forward a submission that the proceedings were 'defective'.

He argued that Price should not be convicted because she was told at the time that she was being reported for using a mobile phone while driving and driving without due care and attention.

Mr Freeman said she was not told either at the time or within 14 days afterwards that she would be summoned to court for not being in proper control of a vehicle.He told magistrates: 'This particular offence is an offence that requires that they are told within 14 days.

'You have heard evidence, that is not contradicted, that this defendant was told that she was to be prosecuted for two offences: one, using a mobile phone, and, two, driving without due care and attention.

'She was, in particular, not told at any point that she might be prosecuted for not being in such a position as being in proper control of a motor vehicle.

'These are three separate offences.

'In this case, although information has been laid, the proceedings are defective because the defendant was not told at the time, nor told within the 14-day time period, that she was liable to be prosecuted for this offence and therefore she cannot be convicted.'

Ms Beckett said it seemed an 'absurd' submission that, because the officer did not list the possible offences she could be charged with, the proceedings were defective.'I remain of the view that it is not a requirement for the officers to cite every possible offence that Miss Price might have committed,' she said.

He famously represented David Beckham in a speeding case in 1999,
when Freeman tried to argue that the then Manchester United player was
'petrified' by a paparazzi photographer while driving in Wilmslow,
Cheshire.

He was defeated at the magistrates' court, and Beckham was banned
for eight months, but Freeman got the ban overturned on appeal.

However, earlier this month he refused to help his own daughter Sophie, 19, fight a speeding ticket.